


Antebellum Innocence

by dear_monday



Series: As Simple As Faith [2]
Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural, Crossover: American Gods, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-28
Updated: 2011-11-28
Packaged: 2017-10-26 15:39:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/284965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dear_monday/pseuds/dear_monday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The old gods are dying one by one, alone and forgotten, while America's new deities are rising from their shopping mall cathedrals. Psalms become pop songs on the radio that spread like wildfire, and poetry has sunk from scripture to laughing stock. Somewhere, Ryan Ross's cell phone chimes. The battery is dead, not that that matters to some people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Antebellum Innocence

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for discussion of major character death (past and imminent). Beta by the wonderful [akamine_chan](http://akamine_chan.livejournal.com).
> 
>  **Edit!** Now with podfic ([LJ](http://dapatty.livejournal.com/82944.html) | [DW](http://dapatty.dreamwidth.org/2309.html)) by [dapatty](http://dapatty.livejournal.com).

When his cell phone chimes, Ryan stares blankly at it for a moment before he remembers what he's supposed to do with it. No one texts anymore, much less calls – none of the Muses are left (none that he's on speaking terms with, anyway). The battery is dead, not that that matters to some people.  
   
He picks it up, ignoring the blanket of dust that's settled over it, gritting his teeth around the stiffness in his fingers and struggling to focus on the pixelated letters on the screen. When he does, it reads: _coffee? b._  
   
He re-reads it six times to make sure he hasn't misunderstood. Incredulously, he types, _You're going to fix everything with coffee? Seriously? I know you were never the smart one, but isn't that kind of a new low, even for you?_ The ache in the near-visible bones in his hands hovers right over the edge of unbearable, and he deletes two fumbled letters for every right one. He looks down at the string of words, small and bitter and arrhythmic and nothing compared to what he could have done even twenty years ago. He swears under his breath and deletes the whole thing.  
   
 Instead, he sends back: _it's been 17 years._  
   
A moment later, the synthetic chiming noise sounds again. The screen says, _exactly._  
   


+

   
"You're not eating," is the first thing Brendon says to Ryan after seventeen years of silence when Ryan meets him on the corner. Ryan's on time, of course; he's got nowhere else to be. Brendon's eyebrows are drawn together and the corners of his mouth tilt downwards disapprovingly. His hands are sunk into his pockets, his cheeks pink with cold and his hair windswept and tangled, but he's so _alive_ that it's painful to look directly at him.  
   
Ryan shrugs. Not being able to eat doesn't bother him like it should. He's never really had more money than he needed, not even back in the day _. Well-fed_ has never been a salient characteristic of poets. He just doesn't see the point in eating.  
   
"You should eat," Brendon insists, wrapping a hand gently around one of Ryan's bird-thin wrists as if nothing's changed since 1969, his warm fingers meeting just over Ryan's slow, unsteady pulse. "Come on. Fuck coffee, I'll buy you lunch."  
   
For a split second, Ryan sees himself through Brendon's eyes, thinner than ever, threadbare and so _tired_. "If you want," he says. It makes no difference, in the end.  


+

   
"How – are you?" asks Brendon carefully, as Ryan picks listlessly at a burger oozing grease onto the plate and a pitiful heap of cold fries. Ryan looks at him.  
   
"Alive," he says flatly, because Brendon _knows_ he's got no patience for stupid questions. "Still."  
   
Brendon hesitates, glancing reflexively to the side as if he's waiting for someone to be there, to drop a sarcastic comment into the yawning silence, but no one does, and Ryan feels a half-hearted twist of guilt as he remembers that he isn't the only one who's lost someone.  
   
"I..." Brendon says eventually. "Good. That's good, right?"  
   
"For who?" retorts Ryan, without thinking. "Good for you, so you don't have to be on your own?" Brendon's smile falters, his guard drops, and he looks like he's about to fall into the void of negative space next to him. Ryan realises this is the first time he's seen Brendon since – fuck. Since Spencer. Since Jon, since Jon-and-Ryan and Brendon-and-Spencer, then just-Ryan, and then just-Brendon again. Ryan _does_ feel guilty now; he'd forgotten how deceptively breakable Brendon is, how easily a miscalculated word can cut him right down to the bone. Maybe, Ryan thinks, he _has_ been on his own too much; he's out of practice at keeping himself under control.  
   
"Sorry," he says quietly, picking at a stray thread on his sleeve. "I didn't mean that."  
   
Brendon lights up again from the inside out, like a streetlamp flicking on, and sure, it's easy to hurt him without meaning to, but it's never been difficult to fix him, either. There's a symmetry to them, Ryan can admit. It's almost-not-quite funny.  
   
"I'm used to it," says Brendon easily, and Ryan will never understand how he just _forgives_ so easily. The twitchy rhythm Brendon's drumming against his thigh sounds thin and unfinished without another set of fingers tapping out a counterpoint. "I know how you get when you haven't left your apartment in a month," he adds with a shrug, and a wry half-smile, but he's the guilty one now; Ryan can almost smell it. It's stupid and unnecessary and makes Ryan bite down hard on his tongue in annoyance, because, well. Brendon will blame himself for anything he thinks is even remotely his fault, and punishes himself accordingly, but this is ridiculous. Brendon's only one person, as is Ryan, and one person is only half as many as you need for the kind of fights with slammed doors and voices screamed hoarse, or even the silent, corrosive kind played out in stealth and spite.  
   
(It takes two, sure, but somehow that isn't what the people who are still around remember of it. The unfairness still stings a little – Ryan knows, logically, that Brendon didn't _ask_ for that smile like a major chord and the way people melt under the force of it, but he got it anyway and somehow came out a martyr. _Logically_ , Ryan knows this, but it's still bitter in the back of this throat when he thinks about it.)  
   
"How are _you?_ " Ryan asks. Not because the answer's going to change anything, but Brendon's eyes are all over him, big and worried like Ryan's a time bomb, and it's making him uneasy.  
   
Brendon laughs, sudden and bright and carefree under the diner's slippery yellow lights. Some other time, Ryan might have smirked and called him _enchanting_ just to see him blush, but – it's been a long time. There are lines in the dirt now and he's hyper-aware of them even in his muddy torpor.  
   
"I'm good," Brendon says. "I'm _everywhere_. I'm on the radio, I'm on TV, I'm in shops and restaurants and – " he gestures expansively " – _iPods_. People don't even have to carry tapes around anymore. Isn't that amazing?"  
   
Brendon is one of a kind ( _nothing changes, right_?, Ryan can't help thinking viciously as the echo of their last _– the_ last – screaming match rings briefly in his head). Not a new god, not quite an old one either, just one who changes with the wind and the songs under people's skin, who will keep changing and will be here until the sun goes black as long as there are people singing. Brendon is scrupulously fair; there's no difference to him between a lonely teenager on a shitty guitar and a writer surrounded by a king's ransom of expensive recording equipment. Ryan doesn't get it, in the same way that Brendon doesn't understand how you can have verses without music. Ryan argues back that you shouldn't _need_ a worn-out chord progression if the words are right.  
   
"Yeah," says Ryan, dragging a soggy fry through the spreading puddle of ketchup, and dropping it back onto the plate. He tries to force a smile; it's more difficult than he remembers. "Amazing. It's a shame most of them listen to such shit."  
   
Brendon mock-pouts, warm and achingly almost-familiar. "That isn't nice," he says.  
   
"No," Ryan agrees, raising an eyebrow. "But it's true."  
   
"They didn't all have you, O wise one and arbiter of all good taste," Brendon says dryly, only half-joking. Ryan found him fifty, sixty years ago, newly reborn while the world was burning with rock 'n' roll, wondering wide-eyed and unsteady on new, shaky legs. Ryan took him in, held on when he was going under, always all-too-aware of the weight of Brendon's solemn, searchlight stare resting on him, feeling the weight of Brendon's faith in him between his shoulderblades every time he moved. Now Ryan's faded and weak with millennia lived and months, weeks, maybe only days left while Brendon's _glowing_ with strength and life, glossy and golden. Brendon wants so badly to fix things, believes that he can, and his optimism is painful-bright and aching-sweet and Ryan feels scared and bitter and sick with it. Brendon's looking at Ryan with this odd expression that Ryan can't quite read, which is – unsettling. New, and wrong enough to twist his stomach a little.  
   
"Brendon?" he says warily. "I don't know what you're..."  
   
Brendon looks blank.  
   
"I don't want your help," Ryan says, pushing his plate away from him, and it's like flicking that switch again, turning the light off. Brendon stands up so quickly his chair slides away, squeaking across the tiles. No one else even looks round, but Ryan can't quite look away.  
   
"Fuck, as if you'd _let_ me! I'm not _trying_ to help you," he bites out, and it's in that moment that Ryan realises just how badly he's misjudged this.  
   
It isn't an intervention, it's a deathbed visit.  
   
The epiphany catches in his throat, making it hard to breathe. Brendon sits back down slowly, his hands shaking like they always do when he's fighting all-for-all just to keep his temper with Ryan. "Look," he says. "I _know._ I _know_ it's gonna be soon. I just – I was so _sick_ of waiting for the day when I'd find out from someone else and realise the last thing I said to you was _I hope you don't last another week_. I said things, you said things, it doesn't have to be – I don't know, the end of the world or anything. _I_ can get over it, but if you're so, so – " he throws his hands up, frustrated; white flag. " – So in love with your damn misery, I'll leave right now. I just thought I'd _try_. You're still my friend. Or, you..." _were. Or at least, you were_. Brendon doesn't say it, but Ryan hears it as clearly as if he had, and something in him is _bendingbreaking_. "Look," Brendon continues, slower and quieter now, like he's already given up, like Ryan's draining his strength. The music playing quietly over the speakers slows, the beat faltering as Brendon's shoulders slump. "I'm sorry if I shouldn't have..." he trails off, standing up again, looking anywhere but Ryan. "I'll go. I'm sorry I wasted your time."  
   
He's halfway to the door when Ryan manages to choke out, "Stay."  
   
Brendon turns back, his smile blinding-bright. He stays.

**Author's Note:**

> Vienna Teng; [Antebellum](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYb-cNOxe8w).


End file.
